CHAPTER XIII.

VIRGINIA UNDER BERKELEY.

CONDITION OF VIRGINIA IN 1670. — - ABUSES AND POPULAR GRIEVANCES. THE GRANT TO ARLINGTON AND CULPEPPER. INDIAN HOSTILITIES AND THEIR RESULTS.-INEFFICIENCY OF BERKELEY. INDIGNATION OF THE COLONISTS. NATHANIEL BACON TAKES THE FIELD IN DEFIANCE OF THE GOVERNOR. HIS INDIAN CAMPAIGN.— BERKELEY PROCLAIMS HIM A REBEL. POPULAR UPRISING. CONCESSIONS FORCED FROM THE GOVERNOR.- BACON'S ARREST, SUBMISSION, AND ESCAPE. - HE CAPTURES JAMESTOWN. SECOND INDIAN CAMPAIGN. RENEWED ATTEMPTS OF BERKELEY TO SUPPRESS THE POPULAR MOVEMENT. - BACON'S RETURN. HE SEIZES The GovERNMENT. FLIGHT OF BERKELEY. THE CONVENTION. - AIMS OF THE BACON PARTY. REVIVING FORTUNES OF THE DEPOSED GOVERNOR.- BACON AGAIN CAPTURES AND BURNS THE CAPITAL. ILLNESS AND DEATH OF BACON. - CLOSE OF THE REBELLION. - PUNISHMENT OF THE REBELS. - ARRIVAL OF ENGLISH COMMISSIONERS. RECALL AND DEATH OF BERKELEY.

IN the year 1670, the Commissioners of Foreign Plantations, in London, asked of Sir William Berkeley a report upon the condition of his colony. Apart from mere statistics, more may be inferred from his response than he saw fit to tell, — more, perhaps, than he really knew. But even the facts he gives are valuable.

1670. The

There were forty thousand people in Virginia at this period: of Condition of these, only two thousand were negro slaves; but there were Virginia in six thousand white servants bound to service for a term of people. years. It is not a violent supposition that these were not contented subjects. The best of them had been soldiers of the Commonwealth, men who had risked their lives for the sake of political and religious liberty, and were not likely now to submit quietly to personal servitude. Others were of an even more dangerous class, for the Assembly of that year had listened to complaints, from members of the Council and other gentlemen, of the dangers that threatened the colony by the introduction of felons. The annual importation of white servants was fifteen hundred; the Assembly hoped at least to mitigate the evils of such an emigration by prohibiting the landing in Virginia of convicts from the English jails. Upon these indented servants and the negro slaves the colony depended for its labor. That their lives were held cheaply is plain, for four fifths of

1670.]

CONDITION OF VIRGINIA.

291

The colonial

them died when put upon new plantations. It was cheaper to buy new servants than to keep old ones alive by sanitary measures. Virginia owned but two small vessels of her own, though eighty ships came yearly from England to take away her tobacco and bring in exchange those commodities of luxury or neces- trade. sity that her people could not do without. Nothing could be exported except to the king's dominions, and nothing, therefore, of much value, could be imported from anywhere but England. No improvement could come, the Governor thought, to the trade of Virginia till she was allowed to sell her tobacco, her staves, her timber, and her corn in the best market, and buy what she wanted in return where it could be bought cheapest. In 1671, she exported sixteen thousand hogsheads of tobacco, on which the export tax was two shillings a hogshead. The price in London ruled the price at which it was put on board the English vessels at the river-banks of the plantations, the planters taking goods in pay. The price of the tobacco was at the lowest, that of the goods at the highest, to which monopoly could bring them. The merchant made an enormous profit on both. More than one old writer says that the remuneration to the planter would hardly find him in clothes; but it was, no doubt, the four fifths of the servants who died that went without the clothes, and not the planters on their great estates, with their generous living and large hospitality.

The militia.

The militia of the province could muster eight thousand men. On the James were two forts; on the Rappahannock, the York, and the Potomac, one each. They were meant, however, less for protection than as ports where ships should load and unload, that the restrictions upon trade might be the easier enforced than when cargoes were discharged and received at the plantations. For a year only, however, was that regulation obeyed. The great fire in London in 1666 reduced the number of ships that came out that season; and the fear that the plague which followed it might be introduced into the colony and spread by the aggregation of people at these ports, scattered the ships again along the rivers wherever a market could be found. But the forts were kept up, and the taxation for that purpose was a grievous burden for which there was no return.

Religious af

fairs.

The religious condition of the colony did not altogether suit Berkeley; with him religion meant conformity to the Established Church, and the church a form of prescribed belief and worship with which the constable should have as much to do as the priest. He hated non-conformity and dreaded any appeal to or reliance upon the human reason. He believed devoutly in authority, and every Puritan that went back to New England, every Quaker

that sought refuge in Carolina, was a good riddance to a ruler who recognized the perfection of human government under Charles I. and Charles II. There were forty-eight parishes in the colony, and in these, Berkeley said, "our ministers are well paid; by my consent, should be better, if they would pray oftener and preach less. But as of all other commodities, so of this, the worst are sent us, and we have had few that we could boast of, since Cromwell's tyranny drove divers men hither." But some of these parishes were sixty or seventy miles in length, and better authority, perhaps, than the Governor's, asserted that many of them were for years without pastors. Nor were clergymen, when employed, held in much esteem, in many cases were not deserving of it. Parishioners were often indifferent whether the parsons prayed or preached most, or whether they did neither. Not unfrequently a lay reader was employed at the lowest possible wages for which a substitute for a minister could be hired. This saved a clergyman's salary, and filled at the same time the Governor's requirement of religious teaching, no preaching and more prayer-book.

Education.

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-

66

But if the Governor was a little doubtful as to the religious state of the colony, he had no misgivings of the perfectly healthful condition of the merely secular mind of his people. To this consideration he turns with the keenest satisfaction. But," he adds, "I thank God there are no free schools, nor printing, and I hope we shall not have these hundred years; for learning has brought disobedience into the world, and printing has divulged them and libels against the best governments. God keep us from both."

Virginia granted to Arlington

-

the

From 1660 to 1676 there was no election of representatives to the Assembly of Virginia. That body preserved its power from year to year by prorogation, and rendered any interference with it the more difficult by restricting the right of suffrage. Industry was paralyzed; the taxes were enormous; official tyranny was intolerable; monopoly absorbed all trade; the people had no voice in the government. In 1673 the whole territory, occupied already by nearly forty thousand Englishmen, was given by the king to two of his and Culpep- favorites, the Earl of Arlington and Lord Culpepper, former the father-in-law of the king's bastard son, the Duke of Grafton, by the profligate and beautiful Lady Castlemaine, afterward the Duchess of Cleveland. The grant was a new source of taxation to the oppressed colonists, who were compelled to pay heavily for the support of agents in London in vain efforts to procure the restoration of their homes to the rightful owners. The condition of the colony seemed well-nigh hopeless, and only some pretext for revolt was needed to arouse the people to resistance. In 1674 some

per.

1675.]

INDIAN HOSTILITIES.

293

disturbances, which promised to become a revolution, were with difficulty allayed by a proclamation from the Governor and the intercessions of some influential citizens of his party.

But the insurrection, which so many causes combined to make popular and inevitable, was only postponed for about a year. Indian hosThe Indians on the frontier - either the local tribes insti- tilities. gated by Senecas from the north, or the Senecas themselves - became so troublesome that the forts were put in a condition of defence, and Sir Henry Chichely, the Lieutenant-governor, prepared to march, in the spring of 1675, against the enemy at the head of five hundred men. There was

promise of a vigorous campaign; the laws against providing the Indians with guns and ammunition

were much more stringent ; settlers were warned

to take their arms to church; days of fasting were ordered, and the whole colony seems to have been animated with the hope that something was at length to be done whose end was the common good. But when Chicheley and his little army were ready to move, an unaccountable and unexplained order to disband was received from Governor Berkeley.

Whether this was done in the interest of the Indian traders, which was Berkeley's own interest, or whether the Governor sincerely believed that the danger from the Indians was exaggerated, and would disappear if let alone, the effect upon the colonists was

unquestionably exasperating. If the Governor would not defend them, they determined to defend themselves.

Murder of
Hen.

The occasion was not long in coming. One Sunday morning, in the summer of that year, some persons in Stafford County, on their way to church, found lying at his own door, wounded and dying, a man named Hen, and near him a friendly Indian, quite dead. Hen lived long enough to tell his friends that the Doegs were the murderers.

Alarm was spread through the neighborhood, and thirty men

Punishment of the murderers.

started at once in pursuit. For twenty miles up the Potomac the trail was followed, till, crossing the river, it divided into two paths. The force separated to follow both, — one party under Captain Brent, the other under Colonel Mason. Brent soon came upon a wigwam, which he surrounded with his men. A chief came out at the Captain's summons, who accused him of having murdered Hen, and, as he attempted to fly, shot him down. His companions within the wigwam made some show of defence, and then, as they rushed out to escape, ten of them fell before the fire of the Virginians. They were of the Doeg tribe, and, very likely, the murderers.

Attack on a

nock wig

wam.

The other party, who also reached a wigwam in the woods, waited for no parley. The Indians, aroused by the noise of the Susquehan firing of Brent's men, rushed to the door, and, as they appeared, fourteen of them were shot dead before the assailants could be made to understand that these were not Doegs, but Susquehannocks. But the murder of Hen was fully avenged. The sun had risen but once over his grave, before-as the Indians believed twenty-four of their people followed him into the valley of darkness.

Retaliation was inevitable. Susquehannocks, Doegs, Senecas, Piscataways, all the Indian tribes of the region were aroused by the slaughter in a single day of so many warriors. Two of these tribes mourned for their own; the third was accused of the act that had brought upon them so terrible a calamity. All had now cause to hate the whites; some of them- perhaps all-proved by new atrocities how eagerly they accepted the lesson. In Maryland and Virginia alike, the isolated planters knew that at any moment they might stand face to face with death.

Expedition against the Susquehannocks.

The two colonies united in an expedition, and a thousand men were sent out under Colonel John Washington, George Washington's great-grandfather, of Virginia, and Major Thomas Truman, of Maryland. The Susquehannocks had taken refuge with their women and children in a strong fort on the Piscataway, and this the combined force surrounded.